SEOUL, South Korea - In a country where elites zealously guard their power, the man who won South Korea's presidential election is a novelty. A maverick who likes to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln, Roh Moo-hyun beat tremendous odds to become a lawyer, then an assemblyman and the president-elect.

Roh was born in 1946 in the village of Kimhae near the southern city of Pusan into what school records described as "a small farming family of the lower classes who are enthusiastic about education."

Too poor to afford higher education, Roh attended only high school. He managed to teach himself enough law to pass the tough South Korean bar exam. He went into a law practice in Pusan, where he gained a reputation as a firebrand. His clients included labor activists and radical students who staged a takeover of the U.S. Consulate in Pusan in 1982.

Roh gained prominence on the national political scene in 1988 when, as a freshman assemblyman, he starred in televised investigations into corruption in South Korea's dictatorship. But he broke with his mentor, Kim Young Sam, a former opposition figure who became president, in 1992 in protest of a deal between Kim and the then-ruling conservative party.

Roh's stand nearly cost him his political career. He lost a race for mayor of Pusan as well as his seat in the National Assembly. He re-entered the assembly in 1998, this time in the party of then-President Kim Dae Jung.

Aside from two terms in the assembly, Roh has relatively little experience in the administrative side of government. The only high-level post he has held is minister for maritime affairs and fisheries; he held that eight months in 2000 and last year. He has seldom traveled outside of South Korea and has never visited the United States, a point of criticism during the campaign.

Barbara Demick writes for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.